Pulaha Roy: Changing the Game

Story and photo by Peyton Zeigler

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - There aren't many huge soccer fans in India. The national game is Cricket. But for a young boy from Calcutta (Kolkata), soccer captivated him.

Pulaha Roy began watching soccer as early as five years old. His first experience was watching the 1998 World Cup. He saw himself in the tenacious, hard-nosed players that he says, "has that warrior thing." The player he admires most: Lionel Messi. "He’s like a rabbit going around and you just can’t stop him in any way possible."

However, for him to cover soccer, Roy had to leave India for the first time.

He is now in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University studying Magazine, Newspaper, and Online Journalism. He keeps his love of soccer in the Sports Communication Emphasis. 

His goal is to write about soccer for a newspaper and have his own column. The problem he sees is that soccer is not the main American sport, but he wants a shot at changing that.

Roy is excited to get more used to American culture before he is done at Newhouse.

"I kind of like the vibe here. In India you don’t normally like walking down the road, people normally don’t look at you and say hi or hello or good morning."

In the mean time, he'll continue to study, make friends, and figure out other quirks of American culture.


This is the transcript of my interview with Pulaha, but if you want the audio version as well, click here.

_________________________________________________________________________

Q&A with Pulaha Roy

Peyton Zeigler: Where are you from, and tell me about where you’re from?

Pulaha Roy: I’m from this city called Calcutta, which is in India. It’s in the eastern side of the country, and it’s the cultural capital of India. That’s what people normally say. There’s the capital called Delhi and then we have the financial capital, which is Bombay, and Calcutta is considered the cultural capital, because it had the first Nobel laureate of India, a poet called Rabindranath Tagore. Back in 1913 he won the first Nobel Prize for India.

PZ: What brought you out here to Newhouse?

PR: I would say ‘cause of my job. What I was doing, I was doing the same thing. I was in news, an online media company. I was a web producer there. But it was the same old desk job where you just have to take wires and do editing and more working as a robot. So I thought like I’ll study more. And my father and my sister are continually pestering me to finish my masters. My sister stays here in Washington so I thought I’d give it a try at least. So I gave my GRE and went for Syracuse and got into Syracuse. I didn’t believe that I got through, because my exam didn’t go that well or my interview, but here I am. Hopefully I’m going to like the next one here.

PZ: Why the Sports Communication Emphasis?

PR: Oh, I really love sports, soccer to be more precise. I’ve always been a soccer junkie and my first match was when I was probably 5, 6-years-old. It was the 1998 World Cup. And coming from India where Cricket is the more prominent game there, people hardly watch football that way, soccer sorry, and so yeah when I got the option of taking up sports I was all about it. I thought like probably in America where baseball and football and NHL and all they are the more prominent ones, I thought about it but then I was like yeah, I like soccer and that’s my forte so why not go for it.

PZ: Is there a moment in your life that really connected you to soccer?

PR: I don’t know. I think probably for 90 minutes the player on the pitch and the player off the pitch they are both very different entities, you know? He might be shy off the pitch, but when he’s on the pitch he’ll just pass 5,6 plays at a time and give it his all. He has that warrior thing in him and go for all those crunching tackles. And I kinda see myself in that player, so yeah.

PZ: Who’s your favorite player?

PR: That’s difficult. There’s a lot of players but my favorite I lean towards [Lionel] Messi, because I’ve seen him play. My father tells me [Diego] Maradona is the all time favorite but I just lean toward Messi.

PZ: Why do you like him so much?

PR: Why shouldn’t I like him? I could just go on and on and on about this 5 foot 6 midget guy, you know (laughs)? He’s always playing with a smile on his face. I’ve seen him when he was 18 or 19 years old and the first time he stepped on the pitch and I was like “who is this guy?” And he’s just 18, 19 years old and probably at that time I was 16 or 17 years old and he’s doing some crazy stuff on the pitch. He’s like a rabbit going around and you just can’t stop him in any way possible.

PZ: Do you want to have some sort of career in the sports world?

PR: If I ever get the chance I’ll like to have my own column in some newspaper, but the thing is I don’t think soccer is all that prominent in America so probably I’ll have to try my luck in Europe. Let’s see how things go.

PZ: Would you ever want to change that culture here?

PR: Oh yeah, definitely. I don’t know why America is not fond of soccer – of course they’re fond of soccer, I mean they play in the World Cup, India doesn’t even qualify for the World Cup. I don’t know why, but if ever given the option I’ll try to change that perspective.

PZ: What are you most looking forward to in your time at Newhouse?

PR: I don’t know, checking out the culture here. It’s my first time out of India so I’m just getting to know everyone. I kind of like the vibe here. In India you don’t normally like walking down the road, people normally don’t look at you and say hi or hello or good morning. I kinda like that here. Complete strangers I look at them they look at me and say hi and I’m like hello. So that’s kind of a new thing. I’m getting used to it.

PZ: What are some other American customs that you aren’t used to that are kind of weird?

PR: Oh, waiting for the traffic. I mean people actually wait to cross the zebra line. That’s something that doesn’t happen in India; it’s a mess. People will probably run over you rather than wait.